labor

The following interview with Joe Burns, author of the important labor text Reviving The Strike, takes up the evergreen questions of the role of strikes and building a base within our workplaces. With the recent wave of teacher strikes these questions are back on the radar of the U.S. left but this interview from 2012 […]

A #55Strong Update on the Omnibus Bill Walkouts From a West Virginia Teacher By Michael Mochaidean On Monday, February 17th, Presidents of the three major education unions in West Virginia announced a statewide walkout by union members in opposition to the Senate’s Omnibus Education bill – SB451. As mentioned previously, SB451’s key sponsor, Patricia Rucker, […]

Editorial note: This article was written by a rank-and file West Virginia teacher the week prior to teachers striking on February 19, 2019. The headline has been adjusted to reflect the current strike. By Michael Mochaidean One year ago, teachers and school service personnel in West Virginia rocked the nation with their historic nine-day statewide […]

Municipal trash workers protest in Johannesburg, South Africa. In the face of fiercely expanding inequality and anti-unionism in the US there is a great deal of discussion across the left of how to revitalize unions. While we see glimmers of hope in the recent strike wave of teachers and innovative forms of unionism such as with […]

What can US revolutionaries learn from factory take-overs and worker cooperatives in Argentina? Two South African writers with Zabalaza (ZACF) look at the example of Argentina’s recuperated factory movement whereby workplaces facing closure during the economic crisis were seized and then operated as cooperatives. The authors looks at their relationship to social movements, their anti-capitalist […]

This past month thousands of AT&T workers across the country have gone out on short, locally-organized Unfair Labor Practice (ULP) strikes in protest of company intimidation during contract bargaining and other issues. Two separate contracts for the workers organized under the Communications Workers of America (CWA) at AT&T expired on April 15 but negotiations continued […]

By Michael Reagan There have been growing calls for electoral participation in the wake of the Trump presidential victory and the horrendous political and social climate that have come in its wake. Most of these voices encourage a social movement strategy called “inside/outside” organizing which argues that protest, mobilizations, and disruptions are good, but that […]

This draft document attempts to present a brief decade by decade outline of labor and the labor movement in the US with an emphasis on the role and relation of the left. First published in 2009. By Adam Weaver Colonial Through Pre-Civil War Period Indentured servants, sailors and slaves organize minor labor protests and rebellions, […]

The following is a transcribed talk by a West Virginia teacher who was one of several speakers at the Red & Black Party sponsored by the Labor Sector of Black Rose/Rosa Negra and which was held on April 7th at the 2018 Labor Notes Conference in Chicago. Hi everyone, I’m Michael in Monongalia County, that’s […]

Join us for the Red & Black Party at the 2018 Labor Notes Conference Featuring: Music and conversation, updates from worker organizers in the struggles at Burgerville in Portland (which may become the first recognized fast food union in the US), the West Virginia teachers strike, and Amazon warehouse workers from Poland and London. […]